Comments on: Alderwood Mall 197x

By: Cliffe

Cliffe — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 07:38:21 +0000

Thanks Joel. Corrected the mistake.

Cliffe

By: Joel Riehl AIA

Joel Riehl AIA — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 05:55:22 +0000

As I noted in a different blog on the same topic, the rendering is by Ken Duffin, not Earle Duff. I knew both men. Ken is still around unlike, sadly I think, Earle Duff. Go to http://www.kenduffinart.com , click on the “illustrations” tab and note the identical signature on the works to the one in this illustration, which clearly says “Duffin”.

By: Matt the Journeyman

Matt the Journeyman — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 04:43:18 +0000

I wonder if they realized that returning to a car parked on a hill with armloads of merchandise — especially in the era of monstrous real metal car doors — was not something that would endear shoppers.

By: Colin

Colin — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 21:04:44 +0000

This mall has a very 1960′s look to it that must have quickly gone out of style. It never looked like this. Notice the sunken parking lot in front of the Bon and how it looks like the Southcenter Bon!

By: Brian Lutz

Brian Lutz — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:57:40 +0000

Interesting. If I ever manage to get back into my long-stalled malls project over at my site I’d probably know more about the history of this mall than I do, but there are a couple of interesting things to note:

-The Bon Marche store (which in this photo looks like a virtual copy of the Southcenter store) ended up looking nothing like this;

-The Lamonts and Notdstrom stores that the mall used to have aren’t present in this picture, nor is the mall’s food court (constructed in 1995-1996, according to Wikipedia.) If you look at HistoricAerials, you can see the mall as it appeared in 1990 (unfortunately, HistoricAerials doesn’t have anything older than that for this area, even though they have photos of the Eastside as far back as 1936,) with the Lamonts store on the left at the north end of the mall, and the Nordstrom on the right. When the Lamonts closed (it was one of the locations that didn’t get turned into a Gottschalks) it was demolished, and a new Nordstrom store was built in its place, after which the old Nordstrom store was demolished to make way for the outdoor shopping area. This was also when the parking garages and the current movie theater were built.